WRT54g 1.1 web pages corrupted, unable to manage

New member here with a seriously bizarre problem. Have used LInksys routers since 1998 or so.

I have kept firmware updated, most recently with 4.20.7 to work with McAfee wireless home security (which I can recommend, but can assure you adds a later of complexity and infrequent frustration). This morning, wifi disconnected for unexplained reason, connection then went up and down. So I hopped on to the status page to see what was up.

The HTML is broken. Every page comes up with the tables broken, JS exposed, you name it. Eliminated all banner blocking proxy and pop up stoppers, still happens. Cleared cache, still happens. Rebooted and connected via CAT5, still happens. Observed the same thing in IE (6.02900) and Firefox (1.07).

This has appeared 2 - 3 times before in years past, and just hitting reload on the browser resolved it.

[Oh, another idiosyncracy, probably unrelated. Out of the box, this router would not let a 3Com 3C905 pci ethernet card connect at 100 mbps. Only worked at 10 mbps. Others (like the Broadcom in my new Thinkpad, and my ex's PowerBook internal Eth0) work fine. Oh well. I lived with it. Used my old BEFSR41 as a switch and connected it that way for a while.]

I backleveled it ... waaaaayyyy back, as the OFFICE SPACE hypnotherapist said, to 1.41.2, and hard reset it (held in reset button for more than 10 seconds). Problem is still there. Secured power for 60 seconds, powered up, hard reset again, problem still there. Oh, but of course, now I have a new one - I am back at defaults, with wifi on, unencrypted, default SSID and default PASSWORD (!), and the corrupted pages are making it super difficult to a) navigate to the pages to change this, and b) submit the changes even if I get there. I guess if some wardriving hacker gets in, s/he'll have the same issues that I'm having. Oddly enough, the Wireless MAC filter page works. Weeeiiiirrd.

I'll attach a series of screenshots in case this is not clear. Whoops, error attaching. Go here.

Have not tried third party firmware, as one required $, another was gzipped in a flavor that WinZip won't open.... And I wanted to get OUT today, troubleshoot the router all afternoon.

But I'm wondering if I've got a hardware issue...? The router's 2 1/2 years old, has been on most of the time ... who'm I kidding, it's been on SOLID except for a move or two, and always plugged into a robust UPS (so we can rule out power spikes).

Any ideas? Suggestions? Words of comfort? If I can't resolve this, it's time for a new one ... and I don't think it'll be a Linksys.

Oh, smack (on forehead). Less than 10 minutes after posting, I tried Firmware 2.02.7, and gueeeeeeesssss what. Pages are working. Stay tuned. I'll come back and post if this recurs or is resolved via the "more magic" method of posting a question online somewhere....

After some tinkering, it seems the router is fine. What I think I encounted is a bit new (to me). Something on my XP box was performing the same filtering/page-breaking in both browsers. It couldn't be my WebWasher Classic, which I've used for years, but entirely out of the picture and unloaded ... it might be the IBM Access Connections software ... or the McAfee Personal Firewall or VirusScan software. Still scratching my head and wondering whose code I want to give the boot.

And yes, switching to HTTPS access on the router helped.

I suppose if all else fails, I can always just VNC to a background system which has none of those "protective" bells and whistles and control the router from there. Pretty silly, but...